The Reasons Not to Use Magento Import Extensions

It is inevitably positive that there is out-of-the-shelf Magento import tool, though it is also known for deficiency of its import opportunities. It is not the barest need for outlets with minimum amount of goods listed, however, the owners of huge e-commerce shop systems will definitely not refuse of being able to import in bulk. Or lets say, it would be nice to be able to import custom options, attributes and attribute sets, do on-the-fly changes etc. Moreover, except of supported by Magento format, there sometimes raises the need not only to perform data import from .csv, but also upload from Excel, .xml, .txt and other file formats.

What to do if you critically need to import something, but cannot with data appending from backend? Obviously, people use search engine or check Magento connect to find the way-out and most often they come across some third-party tools and extensions, free or paid ones. But how to select from the abundance of solutions offered? How wishing to enlighten matters not to get into trap and not to make things worse?

You need to use reliable alternatives that won’t damage your database and assist you in extending default Magento import .csv possibilities. One of such tools is Store Manager for Magento, but do not think that we’re trying to sell the product for you. There’s free trial version available so if you need to import once, it can be done free of charge and what is more you can get free assistance on any import question. Not to sound proofless, this article will describe why the application is more beneficial than other import extensions.

Installation challenges

First of all, Store Manager is desktop application. Therefore, installation won’t be challenging as it generally the same as the installation of any program you use at your PC. What is more, you can get free configuration assistance if needed. Having downloaded any web extensions for Magento import, you will probably have to dig in files, making changes, commenting out lines at your shopping cart installation. Often it requires more knowledge than ordinary online entrepreneur possesses and these changes can have negative impact. Even the installation of template causes issues and mess, not to mention web-based extensions.

Server load

Secondly, Store Manager can run import locally (on your PC), thus it does not require huge server resources. Web-modules for Magento import from .csv greatly depend on server resources and will never handle upload of huge data sets, let’s say million or so, as it may slow-down your site for long time or even make it unavailable for your customers.

Errors after import or why you might need to re-import again and again

Thirdly, often there occurs the issue that the products cannot be edited via backend as a result of extension installation or import with third-party module. The reason may refer to compatibility issues as most of free extensions or codes for Magento DataFlow are outdated. The installation may also require changes in the files of shopping cart that leads to broken Admin (you may see errors when Admin section shows blank page or product tabs are missing). Also very often the products are imported but not shown on backend and you need to save each and every product manually from Admin. In such cases re-indices and cache management will not help and you lose your time restoring your Magento.

With Store Manager for Magento you won't have such an issue, as it works directly with your database, bringing changes to it promptly and the technique does not involve Magento admin. Also Store Manager supports all the latest versions within one month after the official release of Magento, so there’s no need to worry about compatibility issues.

Additional Features

Finally, using Store Manager tool you will not only have wider Magento import possibilities like importing attributes and sets, custom options, do on-fly import changes, but also have feature-rich tool with multitude of content management opportunities.